Report Card: Last Year's List

Montgomery McFate: Senior Social Scientist at the Human Terrain System

Why We Picked Her: She was building a program to help soldiers learn more about the culture and social fabric of the places they're deployed. Among the methods used: embedding teams of anthropologists and social scientists with military units.

Report Card: McFate resigned her post with HTS this summer after a colleague was let go. The program will soon be reviewed by the House Armed Services committee, but remains in place for now and may even soon expand. It has a backer in General David Petraeus, commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, who recently told The Virginian-Pilot, "I hope it's here to stay."